Audit and Budget

The chair is appointed by the President for a term of one year. The Chair may appoint additional members as needed.

NOCALL’s business and fiscal year runs from June 1 through May 31. A proposed/draft budget is created by the A&B Chair by early June for the Board to review initially at the annual Cross-Over Meeting, which is held sometime during the summer months. The A&B Chair should strive to submit the proposed fiscal year budget to the Board no later than June 15.

Audit Procedures

Auditing occurs throughout the year with the A&B Chair working closely with the Treasurer and relevant committee chairs to track income and expenditures as accurately as possible.

NOCALL’s banking and membership systems have been gradually updated with more technology taking the place of prior manual systems. For instance, the membership database is also now used to register members attending various events, such as the Spring Institute, Business Meetings, and the Fall Workshop.

PayPal is used for credit card charges, and it’s important for the Treasurer and/or a Committee Chair to track which payments are going through the PayPal system are for what purpose. It can sometimes be a bit confusing, so patience is a key word. Either the Secretary or a Committee Chair should keep lists of attendees at events, plus how they paid.

The Treasurer is responsible for providing the A&B Chair with periodic PayPal reports, plus quarterly bank statements so that the A&B Chair can rectify income and expenditures and track on the Budget spreadsheet. The Treasurer should be careful to indicate what deposited checks are for – such as for dues, for registration fees or for vendor sponsorships.

The A&B Chair is responsible for updating the Budget spreadsheet as correctly as possible to indicate income and expenditures for the correct purpose.

In March or April, NOCALL’s Secretary requests Annual Reports from the Committee Chairs. Included in the report is a request for funds for the following fiscal year to support the Committee’s work. The Secretary provides copies of the Annual Reports to the A&B Chair. Otherwise, if the Committee Chairs submit their reports on the Wiki, the A&B Chair can access them there.

The A&B Chair uses the funding requests to set up the proposed budget for the following fiscal year.

In constructing the budget, use the previous years’ budgets, as well as the information from the committee chairs as guidelines. Assume that membership will remain the same. If possible, determine from the Board whether the Fall workshop and the Spring Institutes are expected to break even, to make a profit or to show a loss. If there is no decision on this matter, use an arbitrary figure from past experience and show them both as revenue neutral.

There is a budget spreadsheet currently (2017) in use that presents budget lines for each NOCALL Committee, as well as major known events, such as the Spring Institute, regular business meetings, and certain expected administrative fees, such as the chapter insurance from AALL and our PO box fees. There is a column for the proposed budget requests, which are culled mostly from the Committee reports, and a column for what the Board ultimately approves, i.e., the Board may vote to decrease or increase budget requests, based on a variety of factors, such as the size of NOCALL’s treasury and what types of programs that the Board wants to facilitate in any given year.

The proposed budget should be presented to the Board as soon as possible after June 1 for their comments, questions, and corrections. After the Board approves a final budget, the A&B Chair updates the spreadsheet and uploads it to the Wiki.

The Board presents the final budget to the membership at the Fall Business Meeting. A copy should be available at the meeting, as well as on the Wiki.

Throughout the business year, the A&B Chair works closely with the Treasurer and Committee chairs to track expenditures and income. Both expenditures and income are entered in the Budget spreadsheet with updated spreadsheets provided at each Business meeting, as well as being loaded onto the Wiki.

A final budget, including all expenditures for the year is provided (as nearly as possible) to the membership at the May Business meeting with any final, last updates added after May 31. The Treasurer provides the A&B Chair with all of the final income and expenditures through May 31 via PayPal reports and bank statements. The final budget is loaded onto the Wiki and presented to the Board at the Cross-Over meeting in the summer months.